Ground Up 029 - The Way of The Indie Filmmaker w/ Alex Ferrari

Key Takeaways

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Ground Up Show. My name's Matt D'Avella and today I'm speaking with Alex Ferrari of indiefilmhustle.com. He's a director and filmmaker with more than 20 years of experience in the industry and he helps filmmakers and creatives make and pave their own way by making independent films. In our conversation we talk about how the film industry has changed, how Hollywood has changed over the past 15 to 25 years and how that has given power to the content creators and independent filmmakers and why the Hollywood studios are scared shitless because of that. We talk about mindfulness practices and and how to stay sane when creating and executing at a very high level. This is a guy that produces two to three podcast episodes per week, two to three blog posts per week, an insane amount of content and I got to say meaningful content that really help help other people. How do you execute at that level without losing your mind? How do you get seen? How do you build an audience? We discuss that. It's definitely something I'm interested in. How do you take a message that's really important to you, that means a lot to you and get it in front of more than just your parents. A difficult challenge but one that we tackle on this episode and lots lots more but before we get to that conversation, if you like this podcast and you liked minimalism a documentary about the important things I've got something that you might like. I recently conducted interviews with the producers of minimalism to give a detailed look at how we made the movie. Those interviews with the minimalists and inspire are yours for free if you leave a review for the Ground Up Show on iTunes. Reviews help to get the word out for the show and they help us to continue to do what we're doing here. So head over to iTunes, take a screenshot of your review and send it to hello@mattdavella.com and I will send you those interviews. And now without further ado check out this episode with Alex Ferrari. Indie Film Hustle Alex Ferrari in the building. Yes, yes. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, what's going on? Thanks for coming out. No problem, man. No problem. I'm really excited about this conversation. There's a a lot that I want to unpack and learn from you. 20 years in the industry. I just moved out to LA in July. So I've got like two months in the actual film industry. the streets are still paved with gold for you. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. Is it like when I first got here I was like, oh my god, there's post houses everywhere, there's studios everywhere, everyone's an actor. You go to any Starbucks they're writing screenplays. When you're from not here, that's a huge deal. It's it's it's amazing and I even if it's on your site it's a and your podcast and a lot of stuff you talk about is that the industry can chew you up and spit you out and it's it's not It will. It doesn't it's not if it will do that. It's how you resi how you how resilient you are to it and how you deal with it. It's going to happen to everyone. It's happened to everyone. Even the even Steven Spielberg, even Scorsese, even Cameron, all the giants, all of them have their asses handed to them at one point or another in the business and it's just how you deal with it. And even as they get bigger, they still just their problems are just a little bit bigger than ours and a little bit more different than ours but they all have problems. Look, Spielberg couldn't get money for Lincoln. Freaking Steven Spielberg couldn't get Lincoln financed and he had to hustle forever. I mean Scorsese's last movie Silence that was his dream project for like a decade. No one would give him money for it. So they all have to hustle in their own way, you know. Yeah, and I'm curious and and we can get into that and I I I'm really interested about the differences between the indie film world especially with narrative cuz that's something I know nothing about. I know a little bit about the doc world but I think that's that's a probably a totally different story. But before we get into all that, tell me a little bit about your days now. How how do you fill your days? It seems like you got your hand on a lot of stuff. Right now I'm focusing a lot of energy on Indie Film Hustle itself. Just redesigned the site from scratch. Everything you see on Indie Film Hustle is done by me. Wow. So the podcast, the videos, everything is either produced by me, graphics, everything's done. I was going to say that cuz you do have a lot of graphics, graphic for every episode, everything's custom, everything's built specifically. trying to figure a way out not to do that but I just started that way cuz I had a lot more time when I started this thing two years ago. I'm like, yeah, I'll just make everything look pretty and I now have been caught in that that thing. But it's part of the brand now so I have to kind of keep up with it and and at least try to streamline it in one way, shape or form. But but I focus a lot of energy right now on on the podcast as well as the website my membership site and uh all these and and now my YouTube channel where I'm now I'm now releasing something called the director series which is by wonderful filmmaker and his name is Cameron Briel. Biel Biel b e y l and we partnered up. He has this insane series on film directors. And he just goes and like I I mean like kind of like Silence of the Lambs style goes deep deep deep into these guys. So what we Nolan I think he did Fincher, Nolan, the Coen brothers, PT Anderson Such a small indie guy. Yeah, small guys. Kubrick and I think that's it right now. He's working on Terrence Malick as we speak. are film interviews, video interviews with are like video essays to the nth degree. So each episode's like 30 to 40 minutes. Some of them even go to an hour and a half and he breaks down their entire career. Oh, wow. Like everything. So right now we're releasing our first series which was Fincher. And they go into like he goes into specific commercials and like breaks them down and what his styles were and this was the first time he did world building, you know, like in the Express Express Yourself video for Madonna. That's the first time he did world building and then that can be you can translate over to Alien 3 and how he built those production designs that's and all so all this stuff he connects it all and it's so wonderful and I'm so honored to be releasing it through Indie Film Hustle and and we're going to be putting out amazing content about like right now I just released today Tony Scott the ultimate guide and it's everything you ever want to know about Tony Scott. Like literally the same thing but just in an article form not in a video form. What's great about it is that you have with nearly every modern filmmaker today, you can go back and look at the first stuff they ever made. Amazing, right? look back at some of the college projects that they made when they were in school. Absolutely. And and do you think what do you do to fully understand them? Is it to just look at their works or you know, read what others have written and studied about their works? I think for me personally I I did a little bit of this for Kubrick. He's probably my favorite filmmaker. And I went down the rabbit hole about four or five years ago pretty deep. I'd always watched his movies and everything but I I really went full blown seven John Doe style. Went into into Kubrick's world and it's such a dense world but what I did is I literally watched all his films which is always a starting point. And then I read everything. I read everything. I saw everything. I went down to the LACMA when it was here. I wish it was there always. I would just go there as a place to work. Just to be surrounded by Kubrick stuff. But I think just analyzing as much as you can, watching as much stuff as you can. And now with these amazing video essays out there, there's a lot of great stuff. Nerd Writer and and Lessons from a Screenplay and Every Frame a Painting and these guys they they're really good, you know, and it it gives you different perspectives on the on the the artist's work and it just opens up a lot of doors that might have not been open in your mind about the directors. Especially when you're dealing with some of these giants, you know, like Kubrick is just a a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in it it just keeps going and going. And same thing with all the ones I I I said, PT, Nolan, Malick, these kind of guys and the longer the career I mean can you imagine Scorsese trying to deep into go into deep in in Scorsese or or Spielberg who have three decades almost four decades of of film that you can actually access from most of it you have access to. You know, I remember the days that you couldn't have access to stuff. It was just whatever was in the video store and I was in a generation I was lucky enough to have a video store. You know, the generation before me like Spielberg like we never saw anything. Like we just waited for it to come like Kurosawa movies to come at the theater and then we'd sit there and watch it. We couldn't stop, rewind it and analyze it. So I think we're very blessed today which is interesting to see how filmmakers are using that information cuz there's so much of it out there but I don't see I don't see the movies getting better if that makes any sense. I'm not trying to be an ass about it but like you know, there are amazing filmmakers out there but the the the bulk of the work out there is not at at a level that you know, with all this access, with all this information, with all of this material to analyze why isn't the work getting better? Why aren't there new ground like why you know, why aren't the new new trails being blazed? Well, I guess you could break it down into a couple different categories. Would you say the quality is getting better for most films? Oh god, yes. I mean the quality of the production quality? Yeah, I think people are getting a little slicker. Um there's I mean trust me I've I've worked on so many movies in in my career that and all mostly in the indie world that some of them I'm just like, why did you pick up a camera? And then there are other ones are like, okay, he really milked that camera for everything it was worth and the production looked really really slick. I think the quality of productions I think now are gotten to a point where um it is gotten a lot better than it used to be, but the story is not as get the the the the storytelling I think is getting getting lost somewhere in the production. Everyone's always about the camera and how many Ks you've got and and and you know, oh I'm going to shoot on 8K Red Dragon whatever they're calling it now. You know, and I'm like, that's great, man, but at the end of the day it's about the story and it's about those characters and people will forgive low production value if there's a good story. And maybe that's the big problem is that more and more people can do it, so Oh god, yes. I mean it you know, it's a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing cuz we can make films now when otherwise you'd have to go through a traditional system. The bad thing is that a lot of people are doing it and if yours is good, uh it's a little bit harder to navigate through all the the [ __ ] The the the level of um entry is is a much much cheaper to get into it and I I I kind of witnessed this when Final Cut came into into the world. Um I was an Avid editor. Uh and I went to I went to get myself certified as an Avid editor and paid the $800 for the certificate that I never showed anyone. And um but I got certified in Avid and and I was an Avid editor and then all of a sudden this this hooligan called Final Cut showed up and all of a sudden everybody was an editor. Mhm. So where you used to be able to make, you know, 50 or $100 an hour as an editor, now there's 15 kids out there who call themselves an editor, but they don't they're not real editors. They just know how to run a software on on their laptop. And then all of a sudden the the the market got diluted and then the prices started dropping and dropping and then so I saw that first happen in post cuz that's where the technology was the cheapest and it broke through that door. Now the cameras are the same way. Before you could not get anything that looked like film unless you actually shot film. Then the Red came in and the Red kind of really kicked the door down for everybody. You know, once the Red showed up, that really opened the door and really set off the revolution. Then the DSLRs came afterwards and that was like a happy accident cuz they had there's no plan by by Canon. There wasn't. It was just an afterthought. They were just like, yeah, that's for weddings or or that's like, you know, for your home videos. No one they never even thought about like filmmakers. What? We could like do a revolution? It was it was difficult for me uh and for every client that I got at that period of time. This was my senior year of college when the the 5D Mark II came out and uh I had a Canon XH HA1 at the time. Uh a great like HD camcorder basically. Um and it shot really high quality video, but like nothing like the Canon 5D. And then but then to see my friends who would get it a couple of my friends had it and I didn't have the money. I didn't have 3 grand to drop on a camera. Sure. And it but it was so good. You couldn't deny how good the quality was from these tiny cameras. Comparatively to the in the video world, yes, but you compare it to the film world, no. Yeah. Uh and that's where I always had a problem with DSLRs personally. Like I I and I also color graded and finished probably about five or six 5D movies. Really? Yes. That's tough, dude, cuz the early 5Ds too it was so crushed. They just no one knew what they were doing. The the the color space was really low. No one was shooting it properly. No one really, you know, everything was underlit. Mhm. You know, I had a movie once that was shot mostly in in a forest at night on a 5D and they're like, hey, why is everything grainy? I'm like, well, do you want to see something? And by the way, all the stuff on the inside we're going to add grain to it now and now it's a creative choice. And I and I did that on three of the five DSLR movies that I I colored. So I you know, I I always had a bad taste in my mouth. Now that mean the DSLRs have gotten to a I mean a very respectable place and if you know how to shoot them properly, it's good, but I'm still a I'm still old school. I like raw. Sure. I like a raw um file. So that's why I love the Blackmagic so much cuz it shoot raw. I'm like, oh god, and you can go in there and color and tweak and it saves your ass like big time, you know, so if I would have shot my movie on on a DSLR, I would have I would have been screwed. It would have never made it, but be having that raw file really really really helps a lot. Right. Sounds like you have a really great depth of knowledge when it comes to film and filmmaking. I I I mean I I've I I've been around. I've done a few things. Yeah. When did you first start getting interested in film? Um when I started working at the video store. I worked at a mom and pop video store back in '80 something. And I fell in love with movies then and and I didn't know it at the time. I started shooting like stuff with my my grandfather's uh super 8 camera. Mhm. Uh or is it yes yeah, hi 8. Excuse me, hi 8. Hi 8, yeah. Hi 8 video camera. Uh doing like little things for school and and like, you know, hand in instead of report I would hand in a video. My teachers were really cool that way. And uh I never thought of it as a career because you know, to forget that time there was that wasn't a career that you would go after. Like it wasn't in the in the zeitgeist like it is today. So it wasn't even, you know, there wasn't now there high schools that have film programs in it. Like, you know, there was nothing like that. So for me Hollywood was a million miles away. Like, you know, I I studied Scorsese and Spielberg and and you know, I I used to watch laser discs. Uh that's the only place you can get the Criterion laser discs were the only place you can get those audio commentaries which were gold. You know, at the time you can hear Martin Scorsese explaining what he did during Raging Bull. Like, that's insane. Isn't that such a cool phenomenon that they actually do that? The commentary. Like why did that come about and know I don't even know who came up with it, but so whoever genius did, it it helped generations of filmmakers because the laser discs were the first guys to really do it. Criterion I think was the one that really started setting the the tone. Um if you remember, they were expensive as hell. They were like a buck 25. Uh which was expensive back in the day. But uh you know, I saved up my little money and I buy I I used to have a ton of them. I still have a bunch of them. Um and my laser disc player which works. I plugged it in the other day. It's embarrassing. It's so embarrassing to watch the quality. Yeah. It's so bad. It's so horribly bad. Um cuz then I put the Blu-ray of the same movie right in right afterwards. I was like, oh wow. Oh, that's rough. You didn't know what you were missing though. No no, at the time you were like, this is awesome. Like the sound is so crisp. But um so I started watch I started um watching everything I could get my hands on. Um and when I got out of high school, I I looked around and I said, what am I going to do with my life? And I looked in my room and my room happened to have 3,000 um VHSs uh that I had collected over the course of the four or five years I'd been working at the video store. And I said, well, I guess I'm going to be a director. And it's literally that easy. It was that moment on I was like, oh, I'm just going to go direct. And I did and I went to film school and um everything I learned at film school was pretty much obsolete when I got out cuz it was at the the turning point where film was going into digital. Non-linear editing started coming to vogue. So a lot of the stuff I learned was old school stuff which I'm grateful for because I have a nice base in it. Uh but then I started editing um at I I excuse me, I start I got a job being a tape dubber at a the largest commercial production house doing doing commercials in Miami. And I did that for about a I I interned for four months for free till my boss quit and then I got the job. And then I was editing commercial reels for for these big commercial directors. So I started like, hey, I'm going to be a commercial director. Uh but while I'm doing that, I'm going to go learn this thing next door called the Avid cuz I don't want to PA cuz PA sucks. Um so I did I learned the the editing. I I did that for about nine months and then afterwards I was like, I'm going to quit and become a freelance editor like a psychopath. At the what what time period is this? What what This is the '97. Yeah. Freelance anything I feel like would be almost impossible. I was living at home and you know, I was like, what the hell? I'll just give it a shot. biggest advocate for live at home for as long as you can until you can get [ __ ] going. Absolutely, man. So I I went out and I started um started editing right away cuz I actually I I don't know if you guys or anyone in the audience has done this, but I created a a fake reel. Now it's not a spec reel. I actually got um I'm a big proponent of fake it till you make it. And I was faking it pretty hard, but it was just a gray area in my opinion. So it was it wasn't lying per se, but it was a gray area. So what I did is during that time at the commercial house, we had an influx of a bunch of European directors. And they brought all their footage with them. And these guys were doing like Nike style big budget productions in Europe, but no one had ever seen that footage here. So I was like, hey, I'm just going to grab this footage and edit new commercials with it. So I edited these insane 30-second spots and I just threw a Nike Nike logo at the end of it or I'd throw in like a Gatorade commercial at the end of it. And I would just so I created like five or six spots. And then I went out with it. And of course, anyone who saw it like, wow, yeah, sure, we'll hire you. And that started the war and if anyone ever asked me, I'm like, are those real? I'm like, oh no, they're not. These are spec spots. But if no one asked me, I just let them assume. It was their assumption. It's their assumption, not my fault. It's not my fault. Also, it It does show my work. It's a reflection of the your quality of work. So you were dealing with the same raw footage that the original editor dealt with. Right. I'm I was editing it was just my style of editing. I wasn't I didn't copy somebody else's. I didn't have the other I just had raw footage. So I was able to create my own persona if you will through this reel. That reel was so good I never updated I didn't update it for three years. Like how often do you not go without updating a reel? It was that solid cuz I just kept getting work and work and work. So I was like, this is easy. Like, what is everyone talking about? It was also the '90s right before the bubble popped. So there was a lot of money flowing around. There was a ton of money flowing around back then. This is a big music video time too. They were getting millions of dollars. Oh dude, I was doing music videos that were like that C-level artists were getting like 200, 250,000 budgets like you know. Then occasionally you get like I was in Miami so you get the Gloria Estefan. You know, you know, that's the big you know, she's got the million plus you know, budgets and stuff. But but yeah, so I did that for a while and then I I started directing and I got I got a demo reel. I spent 50 grand and I put together a real commercial demo reel which was about like four or five spots I think at the time shot on 35 full productions and I put it out put it on my credit card and borrowed some money from grandpa and put it out there and that's when that's that's the point where the the the business just went right across the right across the chin because I was just expecting all right I'll just send my reel out I'll start directing and you know and these guys are making five grand a day, 10 grand a day. This is easy. Didn't work out that way. You know, fell into debt, you know, uh almost went bankrupt at one point. There was a lot of stupidity that you do when you're young and part of the the gambler's fallacy where you feel like the good times are going to keep coming Yeah. and you're not necessarily preparing for when But that's youth. Yeah. That's just youth. That's just youth. You don't you can be told it a million times but until you feel it you won't you don't know. So there's always that moment where you got to kind of prepare for the worst because it's going to it always comes. It always comes. At one point or another in your life something's going to happen that in the world's going to change the industry's changing something's going to happen you know, so um the uh So anyway, so I did that for a while but I finally got back on my feet directed a whole bunch of stuff directed a short film um that uh kind of took off for me back in 2005 sold I think 5,000 DVDs of it at 20 bucks a pop you know, and I created an online film school. Not excuse me not online film school a DVD Gorilla Film School at the time. And uh and I sold it to filmmakers showing them how I did it with the wonderful camera that will always go down in history as one of the best Indie film cameras of all time the Panasonic DVX100A. Oh that's it. Just the [ __ ] right there. Yeah, that was an amazing camera. That camera was so good. It was the first time cuz I was I was always a stickler so I was like I'm not shooting with the Canon XL. I'm like that's that's horrible. Yeah. I'm not going to do it. Yeah, that was me. It's it's horrible. It just looked like crap to me. But when I saw the DVX I was like it looks like film you know. Was this the there was the HVX2 that came after that? the HVX200 yeah, that was the 720p version of that. And that was also a good little camera. I had friends in in college uh and and friends that I had went to school with that would they had the adapter Yeah. to attach other lenses to it and when I did that [ __ ] I would go Oh my god. my shot with the wide the wide screen adapter on it. And it would like flip it up see the film upside down. Oh yeah dude, there was all sorts of [ __ ] you could do with that camera those cameras. But they were great I and I recently looked at Panasonic's website cuz they were like it's coming back like they were trying to revamp it like and I looked at it. I was like oh wow they're bringing the DVX back because they're just trying Panasonic's trying with that camera. They're they're killing with the GX the the GH4s and GH5s but but they're trying to do it with the video camera and I looked at the footage I was just like Yeah, not quite right. Not there anymore guys your your moment left. Yeah. Uh but it was but for the time that little camera was I mean it was a workhorse. Yeah. God. It seems like you you've always been tapped into the Indie film hustle whether it was in that name or another you you were trying to teach other people how you did it. Was this Was it there a reason why that came about? Were you Were people asking a lot of questions about like how the hell did you make this happen? How did you sell 5,000 DVDs? what I did with Indie First and foremost when I did it with Broken which was the first time I actually did something like this and I was honestly I was ahead of my time cuz there was nobody there there was nothing. I know it's hard to believe that there was no information about filmmaking out there other than commentaries and behind the scenes of you know, 20 million dollar movies which not going to help me right now. But there was nothing out there going hey, here's a DVX100A here's how I shot it. I edited it on Final Cut. Here's my post workflow. You guys can do this too. And it was instinctual with me and I just felt like I wanted to because I you know, they're they're my people. So I was like if I can help in one way shape or form great. Let me do it. Uh and I provided a a wonderful product that they loved and you really could in 2005 you really couldn't go anywhere online without in the film world without seeing an ad or someone talking about it because that was me. I was I I literally sat six to eight hours a day just pounding it on the message boards and the the the blogs and everything. I just hit it so hard that even if today you type in Broken Alex Ferrari on Google there's still probably about 20 or 30 pages of [ __ ] that just still out there and I I once I I think I did it a couple years ago I was like let me see what's up there and I just go through the page and I see how far back I can go. My god it's still stuff out there like it's insane. It really was insane what I was able to do. So the reason why I I wanted to do it again I just wanted to help filmmakers and and if I can help them you know, by selling them a good product that actually is going to help them uh it helps me it helps them it's a fair exchange I think and because the a lot of the lessons that I taught in that little DVD saved thousands of dollars and you know, on on a production so uh but I've been hustling since I was nine man. I was I mean I was I was the only kid in in in middle school with a pocket full of cash all the time. Really? I was that dude man. I was the dude that always had cash and I'm not from a rich family. I was you know, we come from a middle class family. I never asked my parents for money. I just knew that that just wasn't a thing. Yeah, it wasn't a thing. It wasn't a thing like hey, can I have $20? That was so like to this day I can't ask anybody for cash. Like I feel weird asking for cash. I'm like no I'll just go hustle my money you know, I'll go I'll go and work it you know. And I was the one that figured out back then I'm like you know, I'm going to do garage sales every weekend. And I would just go around to all my family members. I'm like what do you got do you want to get rid of and I just take it and I'd set up shop in front of my dad's house and was was a high traffic area. I sold my toys sold my GI Joes sold my old jeans. Like I sold everything dude. Like there was nothing that could not didn't uh that did not get sold and I'd walk you know, I'd walk away every weekend with a hundred bucks. Like you know, for a six sixth grader seventh grader that's a lot of cash back in the That's a lot of And excuse me the eighties. So that was like so I was always rolling. I was always I always and that's where I got my baseball cards that's where I got my comic books all that stuff back in the day. I think it's it's about taking ownership and taking responsibility for yourself and I was just having conversation with somebody earlier this morning about that where um you know, if say your parents take care of you they set you up they pay for your apartment when you get out of college and then maybe you don't feel motivated to get a job. If you don't take ownership and responsibility over yourself mom and dad aren't always going to be there. People aren't always going to be there to help you out. You got to do it yourself. Oh there's no question. I I I plan to have that conversation with my my daughters because you know, I think this I think this generation is is uh is really coddling their kids a little too much and that's my generation coddling the kids coming up and then you know, the millennials and all that kind of stuff. But I think that the you're just doing it your your child your kids a disservice because life is not easy. It can be really fun but it's a journey and it's tough man. And this business this not this business but this life is rough to survive you know, in the United States or in a developed country you know, to hustle to get a job to to work and this is not easy you know, it isn't. Um and if you don't have that work ethic or don't understand how to deal with adversity when it hits you if you're given everything all your life I know those people. I know many of those people that they have just you know, one little thing happens to them and they just crack they fall on the floor and that that then they'll they won't survive. I'd much rather struggle going up cuz that's where I feel like I am right now. I've been struggling for 20 odd years being a filmmaker to the point now where I'm making features and I'm making my movies that I'm like I feel so much like if something goes wrong I'm like I don't care it's all good man. Let's just keep going. Like I don't crack anymore you know, I have already gone through all that stuff back in the day but I wasn't like I was if I had an opportunity and I did early on in my career to like direct a big movie I'm so glad it never happened because if it would have happened I don't know what I would have probably self imploded you know, like if I would have gotten to direct you know, big commercials I was pulling up 100 200,000 dollars a year. I think I would have probably I just life would have destroyed me. I wasn't prepared for it. I just wasn't prepared for that kind of that fame not fame but money and and you know, responsibility responsibility. I just couldn't do it. But so yeah, I think if you don't in today's world if if you got mom and dad giving you everything they're doing you a disservice. I completely agree and I think it's a lot of times we might look down at people who were given everything in life but you know, like you said you almost you feel bad for them because to have the struggles to have to work for something you're developing skills you're learning and you're growing and you're becoming more resilient to when [ __ ] does hit the fan down the road. Well I mean even um, you know, if if if you have let's say you're Look, you can't be if I'm born a Kennedy, okay? Um, you can't blame me for being born a Kennedy, you know, I'm born into money. But and I the thing that's funny is like Kennedy might not be a good example, but let's say a self-made millionaire. There's you know, a lot of them out there that you know, they they came to this country with nothing and they built up something and they're either multi-millionaires or billionaires at this point. All the struggles that they went through they're not allowing their kids to go through. Their kids are going to the best schools, getting the best of everything and when they come out, what do you think's going to happen? They're not going to have the same set of tools and skills that you did by hustling and going up. So, even if you have a lot of money, you can treat your your children in a certain way. It's nice to know that the money's sitting there just in case [ __ ] goes wrong, but you got to teach them the rough, you know, I I love the story I have a story from Denzel Washington. Not that I know him, but I heard the story that was genius. And he said his kid turned 16 and he goes, "I got you a car for your birthday." He's like, "Oh, great." And he gives him a key and he goes out to the front. It's like it's the old minivan that the kid that that family had for a while. It's all beat up and everything. He's like, "Is that my car, Dad?" He goes, "Yeah, that's your car." You know, and he's like, "But you're Denzel Washington." And he goes, "Motherfucker, that's right. I am Denzel Washington. Now, you better go out there and clean that car before I take it away from you. And you're not in that and it's great. But that's the the work ethic that Denzel, you know, from that story at least is trying to show his kids because if you're raised up as Denzel Washington's kid, you know, you got everything. You've got the money, you got everything, but if you don't if you don't teach them the proper values, you know, when money fails, which it always does to a certain extent, life will will destroy them. You know, and then and it's it's tough, man, but I think you got to be you got to teach your children to be as resilient as possible and I actually enjoy now I've gotten to a point in my life and in my career where I enjoy the grind. I enjoy the journey and that's the thing that I think so many artists, filmmakers, but people in general they're always looking for that goal. They're always going like I want that thing and they freaking forget the journey. They just they just focus on I'm and they just like, "Oh, I hate having to walk a mile to get to that place I want to go to." But the mile is the that's the joy because the when you get to your destination, that's a second and you're done. Now what? You know? Now what? You know, at that point in the game you're like, "Okay, so, you know, I've gone to my goal now." That's why I see people so many people that like get an Oscar or you know, you know, make a lot of money or or or do something big. It's hard you you see them fall very often because they just don't know what else to do. They don't have any other aspirations because maybe their whole life was focused on getting an Oscar and once they get that Oscar they're like, "What do I what do I do now? I don't I don't know do it again." Like it's like they don't understand that it's about the journey. I think that lesson is at least for me it was learned through experience. And sometimes that's harder to say than to do. To say it's not it's not about, you know, the the finish line and what you accomplish and what you get. And I I think I knew that say minimalism and doing past projects where I'm like it's all about the journey, but still looking looking at that finish line. Like I just can't wait to be done with this. It's going to be this, this, and this. Yeah, you know, for me cuz I'm a bit older than you. Um, I've gone through that process and you're in that process probably right now that you're just like, "Yeah, yeah, I know the journey, but man, I just want to get to this finish line." As you get older not that I'm like freaking ancient, but you know, I'm like 26, but I look horrible for my age, by the way. For me what it was is I was so beaten down by this business. I left the business for a little while. I always had a foot in it, but I left it for a little while to run a an olive oil company. I opened up an olive oil company with my family. You know, that's a whole other podcast. But you know, I ran the the largest olive oil store in and vinegar store in in Los Angeles. And it and that that three-year process was probably the most brutal time in my life purely because of the physical brutality of the job for me. You know, being filmmakers were you know, we like, "Oh, I've worked 16 hours today." I'm like, "Yeah, I get that." But when you're doing five or six farmers markets a week, you know, waking up at 5:00, moving all the it's just it's brutal. It's brutal. I have such a respect for for for all the farmers. So, if you're at a farmers market, guys, be nice. You've no idea how hard it is. But I left the business and during that time I kind of it was like my walkabout. You know, it's my it was my time to kind of find myself and that's when about a year in a year left in that journey, I decided, "Hey, I'm going to start looking into this online business thing, you know, let me start looking and and I started developing and and I read everything I could about online businesses and content marketing and SEO and the whole the whole world. And I've always dabbled in in internet. I had a website that a business back in this? Like how is this possible?" So, I learned everything I could. I'm like, "Okay, this there's there's a blueprint here. I can do something." And then I opened up Indie Film Hustle right afterwards. That journey this journey I've been on with Indie Film Hustle for 2 years. I don't particularly have a destination with Indie Film Hustle. So, it's taught me to enjoy day by day. And that I mean I have goals with Indie Film Hustle. I want it to do this. I want it to do that. I wanted to grow in this way. But for me it's really about the day-to-day and that's where I think I always get the deer in the headlights from people when I talk to them about it. They're like, "How do you do everything?" I'm like, "I just do cuz I enjoy it. I enjoy the grind." And it is a grind. It's not easy, but it's fun for me. Like I wake up in the morning I'm energetic to go and and work on on my on the blog. And when you start hearing things back from people like, "You know, your podcast gives me hope." You know, that's powerful. That's like food for the soul in my opinion. And and and they're like, "Hey, because of you I I I just made my first feature. So, thank you." That's so powerful that I'm making that kind of impact on the world with my little microphone in my room. You know what I mean? It's it's really really powerful and with a little website. You know, it's just a website, you know, with some information on it. But when you connect it all, it really does impact people. So, I really enjoy that journey. So, when I went down the journey to make a movie, this I don't know how you felt about it when you before you made your first feature, but you you think of like the feature film. It's this mountain that you have to climb, this monstrous mountain. And I always done that. I was like, "Oh God, it's like I got to have this. I've got to have that. I got to have this person in it. I got to do this." And you know, I woke up I'm 20 years in and I'm like, "I got no feature." And now there's no excuses. Like I can make an excuse 15 years ago. Like it's just too damn expensive. I can't do it. There's no excuse now. None. There hasn't been an excuse for probably about 7 years. So, I'm really No good excuse for at least 7 years. So, I am I woke up one morning and I said, "I'm just going to go make a movie." And I called up my friend Jill who's an actress and a comedian. I'm like, "Hey, I want to make a movie. I want you to be the star of it and I want let's make a movie about your life about what you go through as a female comedian in LA, female comedian actress in LA." And she's like, "Okay." And she wrote a scriptment which is a very loose very tight outline, but barely any dialogue. And she hired all her friends. We brought all her friends in who are all like, you know, Reno 911 and Mad TV and you know, big big actors. And they all came in for for favors. And we all literally from the the moment the idea was had for me to call her to the point where we had a finished product was less than 5 months total. And during the process was the most enjoyable creative experience of my life because I had no attachment to outcome. I didn't if it made no money, great. If it made money, great. It didn't matter me. Didn't mean anything to me because of the budget we were working with. You know, if I have a $500,000 movie, it's a whole other ballgame. But for such a small like, you know, personal independent film, I was like, "Hey, whatever happens happens." And with that attitude the actors got in and they just started playing and they every one of them were like, "Wow, this was so so much fun." I'm like, "Yeah, cuz we just didn't we just enjoyed ourselves and we flowed." It was a complete experiment in flowing with your chi, flowing with the the force, whatever you want to call it and not if anything happened that I wasn't on in the plan, I'm like, "Let's go." I just literally just wherever the waves took me is where we went. And as a filmmaker, you're supposed to supposed to control everything. Now, for this kind of movie it made sense. You know, for other kind of movies, other kind of stories it did it doesn't. But for this one it made sense and that was a plan. You know, we planned to be to do this with this kind of movie. So, that's why it made sense to do it. It was all organized based around our resources and based around the time and the money that we had access to. And that journey was the most you know, like I literally we literally premiered the LA premiere was at the Mann's Chinese Theatre or whatever it's called not TCL or whatever, but the Chinese Theater. And, you know, we had a red carpet. You know, I'm like, our little movie's at the Chinese Theater. And, in all honesty, and I said it there that day, I was like, it's nice. Like, it wasn't like it was like before, that would have been the thing. Like, oh my god, the whole world would have been revolving around that. But, for me, I was like, I'm very grateful. I'm very humbled. I'm It's a wonderful experience. But, I'm good. Let's keep going. Like, that it it didn't You know what I mean? It wasn't it wasn't the end-all be-all. It was just another another step in the journey for me. So, for me, it wasn't partic- because there wasn't a goal to get it into a the Chinese Theater, to have a big premiere in LA. That wasn't a main goal for us. Our main goal was just like, "Hey, let's make a movie." And if anything else happens, it happens. And that's exactly what happened. It's just that the the releasing of the expectation. You don't You're not having these high hopes and dreams that this is going to be this and this. You're just enjoying that journey, enjoying each day on set. And, like you said, that that has been a a radical shift for me to have for most of my career done freelance work, doing weddings, bar mitzvahs, all all the the the stuff that isn't glamorous at all, and being bossed around and pointed around. Every once in a while having good projects and good clients and and developing those. And and yeah, client work can be great. But, I I think it's completely different than walking on set or starting a documentary where you look behind you and there's nobody watching what you're doing. There's nobody looking over your shoulder at your lens to tell you, "No, do this, do that." It's up to you to to execute on that vision. And I think there's there's not much like it. There There really isn't. And having that freedom was addictive because now, on my next projects, I'm like, well, I'm I'm going to do this again. Uh my goal now is next year I'm I'm going to try to do probably like two or three features, um which is insane, and I'm going to try to do them in a row, uh which is even more insane. You didn't when you finished your first feature, you weren't like, "Never again." No, I was just For me, it was like, okay, I got to go I got to take this the entire way. So, for me, when I first finished the feature, I then I'm like, okay, we got to I went down the the the festival circuit, and you know, got rejected, and got a lot of rejections, got a few people in. We world premiered at Cinequest, which was a really big, you know, big deal for us. And uh it was a lot of fun. And but I wanted to go down that road, and then also now experience the whole self-distribution aspect of things. Like, how are we going to get this out there? How are we going to do this? So, it took me a long time for me to go through this whole process with the movie This Is Meg because I was just going through like, okay, how am I going to finish? Like, I got to walk this journey before I start another one. And now the journey is pretty much at the at its end. You know, we're releasing on Hulu. We sold it to Hulu. Uh and it's going to go up October 15th. Like, our little movie got sold to Hulu. That's insane. That's insane. Like, when we got the call, we're like, "What? Get out of here. No." We were just like throwing it out there to see if anything would happen, and it did. Yeah. Um and now, you know, Jill and I are developing a show around Meg to see if we can pitch that, uh as well, because it's like, "Hey, we did it with a feature, why can't we do it with a show? We don't need a lot of money to do it. Let's Let's go out there and do this." And this is what's changed, too, though. It's not only can you make it, but you can get it in front of Right. audience. Yeah, so we're trying So, I wanted to go down that road, and I wanted to see what happened. So, now that I've done that, I'm like, okay. I And I And during this whole time, by the way, I I finished post on a huge a show for Hulu, and then I directed a series for Legendary Pictures. That was an eight-episode run. We shot 96 pages in four days. It was insane. I've never heard anything like that before. That's Yeah, yeah. I did a whole podcast on it. It was so It was like, this is how you do it, guys. And I laid out the the the techniques that I used to to shoot 96 pages in four days. It was insanity. Never 12 No more than 12 hours. 12-hour days. That's incredible. ridiculous. It was the stupidest It was the most stupid thing we've ever heard. Like, if we're like, "We've come back for season two, this is not happening, guys. We're not doing this again." And then each episode had like 140 visual effects that we did in a week, each week. Wow. So, you know, and I It was It was pretty intense. So, I did all that. So, I was busy doing those things. And then by finally, when I got off of those, I'm like, "You know what? I I got to focus some energy back on Indie Film Hustle." So, that's why I started doing that. I'm like, "I'm going to take out the rest of this year to do that." Um I'm doing a bunch of other projects, as well. And uh after the new year, we'll see when I will launch the the next projects. Um cuz I've already been kind of slowly building the arsenal. I'm I'm I don't know about you, but like, as a filmmaker, I'm like, I got an idea for a movie. So, I got to buy these lenses. And I got to get these cameras. And I got But, I'm slowly just kind of like, and I need this this thing in place, and I need that. So, I I'm one of those guys that like, I quietly look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm just kind of like putting everything together, so when I pull the trigger, it just goes. Yeah. So, you know, I'm shooting the next my one of my features next year on on the pocket camera. The whole feature's going to be shot on the pocket camera, the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. We're shooting with Russian glass. And I got a whole set of Russian I got buddy Conrad, who helped me out with the podcast early on, he's like big into like buying lenses from Dude dude dude all over. I'm a I have a problem. And I And I've actually I'm clean now for three months. No No lenses. Okay, maybe two and a half months. No lenses because they're so cheap. Oh my god, yeah. So, like, I have, you know, we're talking about $100, $200. At the $200, it's like, "Ooh, god, I'm getting a little crazy." Most of them 50 bucks, 70 bucks. And you put them on, and you're just like, "This looks awesome." Yeah. So, and I got a set of Russian glass that is just like a bu- And it's not like a set. Like, I've created this set. And and lens geeks out there, you guys will will get a kick out of this. I actually got a Kinoptic 5.7 mil. Do you know what a Kinoptic 5.7 All right, so, did you ever see Clockwork Orange? Yeah. Or or The Shining? Mhm. So, Kubrick used to use a Kinoptic 9.8. That's the 35 mm version. It is basically the widest lens you can buy without fisheye. Get out of here. Yes. So, I got the 5.7, which is a 16 mm version of it, and put it on the pocket. Oh. And oh my god. That's dope. Dude, it's insane. It's in mint. I mean, I bought it on eBay, mint. Like, it came off the factory floor. The front of the the front of the lens is flat. What? It's flat. It's like straight flat. Yeah. So, in my Now, we're getting to lens geeking, sorry. But, so, I'm shooting a bunch of stuff with that, and I know what I want to do with it. So, I'm starting to play with it. So, all these things are going in my head. That's just the way I work as a as a creative. I just have all these ideas, and I start putting puzzle pieces in place. And then when the puzzle pieces are in place, I'm like, "Okay, now I'm going to do it." And then I go. And that is that simple. I like the the aspect of of adding some constraints to your work, too, where when I went to shoot Minimalism and doing a topic on Minimalism, I was like, "Okay, I want to be really thoughtful and intentional, that's the idea behind the film, into what gear I bring." So, I'm like, "I'm going to shoot everything in this entire film on a 24 mm and a 50 mm, and that's it. Those are the only lenses I'm going to use." And then, you know, and I did that for the majority of the tour. And then eventually, like, I got to some other shoots where I was like, "All right, you know, maybe I'll bring something else in." I think the constraints help a little bit. And then But, then you realize at that point why I might need a 200 mm lens because I don't want to be like, if I'm filming people shopping, I don't want to be running up in their face to get the shot. Right. there's there's the balance there. But, I think it's important to be really intentional and and Yeah, absolutely. Are you as as crazy and neurotic as I am before a shoot in terms of figuring out and laying out gear and understanding exactly what you need and exactly what you're going to bring into a shoot? Um yes, to a certain extent. I'm not neurotic about it, but I do check it all. And I You know, like, on Meg, I was the DP on it, as well. So, I was bringing in all the all the gear and you know, setting it all up, my rig, the night before to make sure everything I had was in my box. You know, cuz I'm like, I had The thing I didn't want to happen is get out there, I'm like, "Oh, I don't have that one bolt." And I can't do everything I need to do today. And like, you just couldn't do it. Um since I didn't have an assistant, I had to be a little bit more anal about it. But, but overall, no, I'm not that crazy. Just I'm actually with Meg, I learned that I need to be a little less minimal. I definitely got to I I brought too much stuff. The rig was too bulky and too big, even though it was a small Blackmagic uh Cinema Camera. Um I It was just too big of a hog. You can't just move around as quickly. Well, I could move I know I It was a hog that was big, and it could move quickly because I had it set up. But, it was brutal on my my body. Um and the just the everything was just too big. So, this That's why I was like, "I'm doing the pocket camera next." Like, I'm going to go smaller. And uh and I have I own a um a mini Ursa Mini, which is a 4.6 cams. They're They're red ver- You know, they're red or they're Alexa. So, it's a big camera. Um and it shoots beautiful images. But, I was like, "No, not this one. The next one I will, but not this one." You got to know what you're shooting and why you're shooting it. Right tool for the right project. And that's the thing a lot of people don't understand, either. Like, when I when I tell people I'm going to shoot something on a Blackmagic Pocket, they're like, "But, it's 1080p." I'm like, "And?" Yeah. Like, Where like, yeah, like, where am I going to be putting this? Where is this going to be seen by people? Is it going to theaters? Even if it goes to theaters, I can bump it up to a 2K, which is all I need for a for a DCP, which is what we did on Meg. Mhm. I saw it projected. I was like, "This looks amazing." Yeah. You know, and if I have to bump it up, I'll bump it up. The only difference I see is is the You can tell mostly with the motion graphics. When motion graphics when they get scaled up, they tend to look a little bit grainy, not not as Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, but if you're going to bump up, you can redo the promotion graphics if you need to, so. But, yeah, I that's But, for the most part, video is you can scale up fine. Like, I saw our film in theaters, it was 1080p, it looked fine. It was great. It's great Yeah, people just get caught up with this K [ __ ] so much. It's like, oh, the K's and the this and the how many pixels and like, dude, just tell a story, man. No one gives a [ __ ] about the camera. Also, because when you look at the progression of of our work and we were talking about early podcasts you'd done and I look at early work that I'd done, you know, you grow so much so quickly if you're doing consistent work. If you're putting out short film after short film, it doesn't matter what you shot on that early version on because it was more about making a bunch of projects that were okay, that were pretty good. Maybe you killed it on one of them, but it was it's more of learning and bringing that skill to the next project. Like I was with with Meg, you know, when I'm sure you felt this way most filmmakers do is like, my first film has to come out the gate like freaking like a freaking racehorse, man. We got a boom, it's explosion. You know, we got to have Reservoir, we've got to have El Mariachi, we got to have, you know, something that's just blows everyone out the water. And that that dialogue in my head kept me in it from doing anything for so many years where I finally said, I don't care anymore. I'm just going to make a movie. And Meg is my first feature film. Um, and is it the most I can do as a filmmaker? No, because it was a an experiment as an artist of what I wanted to do with that project at that time. I'm actually known more for actions and more elaborate world building and other things I've done that with my shorts and commercials, but I just decided I'm not just not going to wait around anymore. And it's been the best experience, like I said, in my life to do it. And I didn't care that it's like it's going to, you know, you start getting into your ego where it's like, in your filmography, what's the first like, no one gives a [ __ ] dude. Get out of your own head, dude. You know, and I literally just finished today that Tony Scott article where I literally went through his entire his entire career. And I was, you know, formatting and getting it ready for the for the podcast for the blog and I just started looking at the man's history and his projects. And when you just look at it from a distance for a minute, it was so humbling to see like, he started in the '60s. His first movie is nothing to be it's not like a great thing. His first feature was The Hunger. The Hunger is really a good movie. If you've ever seen The Hunger with David Bowie about vampires. And you look at it and like, it's a really good movie, but it's not like it didn't blow everybody out of the water when it came out. Like, no one really like, you know, what made Tony Scott was basically Top Gun. Top Gun was the thing that got And you know why he got Top Gun? From a commercial he did that shot a plane. He actually just shot a plane landing like a an F-16 and Bruckheimer said, oh, he knows how to shoot planes. Let's give him Top Gun. Wow. And you know, mind you, he had shot a lot of commercials under his belt and he was, you know, a commercial director, but they said that was the clincher. You know, so it wasn't his first feature that got him his work, it was a commercial he did. So, it's so fascinating, you know, and same thing for Ridley Scott's first movie, The Duellists, you know, the man made Blade Runner and Alien. You know, those are the movies that he'll be remembered for, but his first movie was The Duellists, which is a good movie, but you just got to get going, get started and got get out of your own way is is my biggest piece of advice for people in any in any world, in anything you're doing. Don't get caught up in all that like, how people are going to look at me or how people are going to receive me. I'm like, just do it because if you do it, you're doing more than 99.9% of people out there talking about it. And that's such a big thing. I think you want to make something as great as you possibly can, but don't let perfection stop you from getting started. It's the worst It's the worst It's a illness. Perfectionism is an illness in the creative field because we all want everything to look perfect. We want everything to sound perfect. Like you were talking to me, like you edit your podcast, I don't. You know, and I'm like, I just I just tell my got my guest, I'm like, we're just going to roll. And unless, you know, you literally want me something cut out or something really, you know, goes wrong technically, I'm just going to let this go. And it's has not hurt my situation at all. So, then, you know, that extra 3 4 hours I would be editing, I could be doing something else. Yeah, that's the dream for me. I think what I want to get to is actually doing this live. And but I want to keep the video up, but like at some point, I I think you're right, perfection is an illusion. Like, it it doesn't exist. Yeah. You know, I mean, you can spend days and days and I'm I'm I'm the guy that just goes, a pixel, a pixel, a pixel on everything because I'm a a post guy. So, I've been editing for all my life for all my career professional life and I've been a colorist. So, I'm really into that kind of like kind of perfection thing, but it stops you. It slows you down in a lot of ways. So, you just got to go. You know, a lot of people I use this filmmaker as an example, Robert Rodriguez, who, you know, one of my heroes growing up. And a lot of people, you know, bag on him a lot and his work and this and that, but the man has directed 20 features, has built an entire empire for himself, has he runs a network, he owns and runs a network right now doing whatever he wants whenever he wants. Isn't that kind of the dream as a creative to do whatever you want whenever you want have the resources to do it? I don't think he gives a crap. And he just does it. And he you know, if I would be asked a question, should you do that movie? I'm like, I probably wouldn't have done that. I probably wouldn't have done that, but he doesn't give a [ __ ] And that attitude is so wonderful because he just doesn't care. And that lack of care, not meaning that his work is horrible or anything like that, but he just does it. Woody Allen has made a movie a year for 30 years. There is no filmmaker who does has done that. He just makes it every year there's a Woody Allen movie that comes out all the time. And some are good, some are masterpieces, some are bad. But, that's art. You know, Picasso wasn't perfect every time. And neither was, you know, any of the Michelangelo, DaVinci, and none of them. They all just did. Some are better, some are worse. But, the every time you do one, you move forward. You move forward as opposed to thinking about it or talking about it or creating other [ __ ] to stop yourself. There's enough obstacles in this business without you throwing more in front of yourself. What were some of the early mistakes? I don't know if there's maybe one or two mistakes that you made early on that have a long enough podcast for that, but go ahead. Say like early on when you when you're just getting started, you're directing your first feature, are there mistakes that you made that stand out to you that that you would share with up and coming filmmakers? The mistake of Meg? Like any mistakes I made on Meg or early in my career? That or even even earlier on when you first started directing. Like, definitely when I think you're getting started out, there are potential pitfalls that people can fall into. Kind of like what we're saying where you're just seeking perfection. I think the biggest I think the biggest mistake that filmmakers make is I'm not sure it's a mistake, but it's the thing that is the biggest dragon you've got to slay is ego. Ego is a huge huge huge problem for everybody in every aspect of life, but in the film industry even more so, especially directors and filmmakers because especially when you're young. When you're young, you know, when you're you're 20s, you know, I know a lot of I know a lot of 20 year olds are a lot more advanced than I was when I was 20. There's just more information out there and all that kind of stuff. But, 20 year olds are still 20 year olds. You know, I've I've yet to meet one that's And I'm sure there are, don't get me wrong, but I have met some very accomplished ones. I'm not bagging on 20 year olds, trust me. But, um, but they just don't have the life experience yet and no amount of intelligence will give you that. So, you need that experience and the world beating you up because the ego will take you down the paths that you should not go down. And what the ego And this is a great anal great analogy for for for the ego. You've gone you've had a wonderful meal. You've you've ate this delicious meal. And you're stuffed. You know, those you know, you went to In-N-Out. You had a double double. You know, you got Mistakes were made. Mistakes were made, but you're stuffed. Then someone goes, hey, let's go get some cheesecake. And you're like, and this is where the inner dialogue happens. He's like, nah, go ahead get the cheesecake. You just work out a little bit more tomorrow, you'll be fine. Cuz the ego wants that. So, you go and eat it. And that night you get home, you're taking your clothes off and you look in the mirror. And that same voice goes, you fat piece of [ __ ] Why did you eat that piece of cheesecake? What the [ __ ] Dude, you just told me to go eat it. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. YOU'RE A FAT [ __ ] NOW. Look at you. That voice, controlling that voice, ignoring it and becoming its boss. And it's a struggle on a daily basis. It's a struggle on a daily basis. Every day is a new war. Every day is a new battle that you've got to win with that voice inside of you, that ego. And I think that's where so much so much horror in the in the world happens because of that. But, generally, if we're talking about the film industry, so many mistakes are made, so many careers are disrailed derailed and destroyed and lives are destroyed because of this because of this ego. And I've been very close to it. I've seen it in other filmmakers, you know, having that perspective of working in the in post-production and, you know, probably finishing about 50 features in my in my day seeing up close and personal those battles and and and the egos and and the the delusions of grandeur and other thing people got to work out worry about. I mean Well, I think that's the most the most important thing that you can do we can do is to help people to not go down that path cuz it seems like that's our human nature. Only more experienced more skilled people who have gone down this road and have actually tried to and then believe me I'm no I'm no guru by any stretch. I'm still dealing with stuff on a daily basis myself. But you kind of learn how to let go of some things and you start learning how to maneuver that situation and and handle the ego. But the ego pops its head man and the thing is that the ego will never sleeps. It's always there. That voice in your head is always there no matter what. So you can you can maybe have a 3-month run 4-month run you're good you're good but the moment there's a sense of weakness just a little bit that's when it pounces. So imagine having a dude that's you know, a 250-lb MMA fighter that sits next to you everyday all day waiting for you just to fall asleep or to turn the other way to clock you beside the head. That's who you're dealing with on a daily basis and you always have to have your guard up against it. But that moment which happens you're like you know, I'm tired poof there it is and you just got smacked in the head. You're like son of a [ __ ] and then that can I mean that's one punch is not that big of a deal but if you just let it keep going that's where the problems are. You start going down the wrong path. Do you have any mindfulness practices things that bring you back on course cuz I think we all do this most of us do this especially those who are trying to be more mindful where you have a good run you're doing good. I'm eating healthy and I'm I'm kind of feeding that voice and then you go traveling for a week and then you come back and then you're just off of it for 3 months where Yeah, cuz you you got derailed a second. Yeah. You have to become so strong in the head the in the mind. The mind has to have a strength and ability to to overcome that and that's the struggle that you you have to deal with. Do what what do I do? I just at this point in the game I just scare the hell out of myself. I'm like if you don't do this this is what's going to happen to you. You know, if you don't keep doing this this what's going to happen to you. And if you keep eating this way you're going to die. You're going to go diabetic. You're going to go this or that you know, and as you get older these things start creeping in more and more and more. Like when you're 20 to [ __ ] dude I was living on I was living on Taco Bell at 3:00 in the morning when I was 25 dude. That was like my that was college food. You know what I mean? So I was like [ __ ] whatever I'm indestructible woohoo. And you know, it's Baryshnikov had a great saying when you're young you challenge your body. When you get older your body challenges you. And that's it's so true no matter who you are it we all go through it no matter how good you take care of yourself at a certain point the body you know, and you can do a lot of things to help yourself along the way. You know, and there's a lot of things you can do to hurt yourself along the way. But as far as mindful practices I just scare the living hell out of myself because I know I literally just scare the hell out of myself because I've been I I literally just scare the hell out of myself because I've been I have the I have the wonderful wealth of experience in my life and in my journey that I can pull from. So I'm like you remember that time when you [ __ ] up? That's going to happen to you again. And I can pull from that. When you're younger you don't have those things. You have to come up with other things. So I've made so many mistakes. I've stumbled so many times that I can constantly pull from a well of crap that I have in my past and go that's what's going to happen to you if you don't just keep going down this road. So stop it. And and also a lot of it honestly my meditation is Indie Film Hustle if that sounds that makes any sense because I spent so much time on it that you know, creating all this content is a meditation because you just sit there you're one with the content. You know, you just sit there and you create and you create and you create and you create and it keeps the it keeps things flowing. I think it's also you're creating meaningful content. You're creating something that that is connecting with other people that you're learning from you're writing or creating a podcast. I think it's these are ways for us to better understand ourselves because before I started writing before I started doing this podcast a lot of the thoughts just stay in your head. And if you want to make changes to your life if say you're you want to pick up a workout routine or a better eating habits the best thing you can do is just start to write down what you're doing right now what you can do in the future and what you want out of yourself. No, absolutely absolutely without yeah, without question. I do want to I want to talk about the traditional film industry versus the Indie film industry and why Indie film exists. So yeah, I'm new to Hollywood. So walk me through it. What what's been happening all these years? So as far as what like this is a big question to say we're talking about decades of stuff here. So what do you want to We can talk about the the current film industry cuz obviously a lot is changing but I'm curious about how it's structured. Who are the gatekeepers of the traditional film industry? And I imagine that's you might put it at a certain threshold or certain studios that develop films that would be called the industry. So for me the big change happened in basically 89 when Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape won Sundance. That was the first time that I can remember other than like Easy Rider and things like that but that wasn't an industry that was more of a fluke. There wasn't an industry behind that. And when I when I say Easy Rider Dennis Hopper's movie he he made a movie outside the studio system for like $175,000 a bunch of bunch about a bunch of hippies running around you know, doing stuff. And and the studios were you know, they were making Star Wars. Like they they they didn't they didn't know idea what the hell they didn't I don't think they had made Star Wars yet excuse me. They were still figuring things 70s were really bad for the studios cuz they just didn't understand how to connect with the younger audience. So they're like what do we do? What do we do? Like well these guys are in film school let's open the doors to them and they gave the the keys to the inmates and the inmates start running the asylum and that's what happened with Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola these kind of guys they were given free range. That that moment in time is gone now. But for that moment that's how they did it and then when the 90s came into play that's where independent film as we know it today kind of started in my opinion where films like El Mariachi, Clerks, She's Gotta Have It, Slacker all these movies were being done by independent voices outside of the studio system and they weren't making a lot of money. You know, it's not like they made you know, a ton of money Mariachi made like a million and a half 2 million bucks. You know, Clerks probably pulled in a mill or something like that mill or two. You know, these guys weren't making bad mad money yet but that was starting of the starting of the industry. And for a while there was a lot of a lot of money in the Indie world money being put in money putting in till the crash of 99 then again again the crash of 2008 where things really radically changed. After the crash of 2008 the technology started getting so cheap that now anybody can go make a movie. And then the The Blair Witch Project came into play in the 90s which was very instrumental in in in this whole thing. Paranormal Activity also came in later the Saw movies which were studio but still very low budget. These movies all started coming in people start saying hey wait a minute I could go do this. So the gatekeepers in the traditional world is this. Right now there's a handful of studios there's probably like five five big studios and you can you can argue that Lionsgate's a mini studio. There's a couple of these little mini studios out there. But uh these guys are about they're all businesses now. They're not run by filmmakers anymore. They're run by conglomerates. They're they're monster things. Before the studios were run by actual filmmakers by people who were in that's all their business was. You know, Universals owned I don't know if they're owned by Bacardi anymore. They're owned by NBC. I don't know who owns who anymore. But you know, they're they're run by you know, Coca-Cola or you know, a soft drink company or liquor company you know, or a news organization whatever. They're not filmmakers. So what they do is they go okay, well we have all this new competition out there with streaming and everything else. What are we going to do? Well, we have to create spectacle. So now before they used to make 30 or 40 movies a year now they make five. But those five cost them 150 to 200 million dollars plus about 100,000 100 million dollars in P&A money. So uh promotions and advertising money. So they're rolling the dice on less product but the bigger product it is. So that's why all we see coming out of Hollywood is generally reboots established properties because those are risk averse. They're being very risk averse. They don't want to take any risks. So when a movie like Deadpool shows up and they they literally were forced to make Deadpool like literally were forced and they gave them 30 million dollars which in the studio system it's nothing. And with that 30 million dollars that movie literally beat every superhero movie not only of that year but I think other than the Marvel stuff it beat most of the Marvel stuff not the big stuff but like a lot of the the little it built it beat every X-Men movie ever which is insane. It beat so many you know, Fantastic Four stuff all this kind of stuff and people were like what the hell happened? Like oh wow an original idea people really want to go to an original movie. It was originally marketed. It was good. You can see that there was no studio involvement. Like they just kind of like, "Oh, let's let them do what they want to do." And because of that, look what happened. But generally speaking, you know, we got And that that doesn't change much. It changes a little bit. A little bit. at it. It changed a thing a bunch of stuff for us now because now it's a new property, but it's low budget. That cost me $35 million to make. It cost 35 million bucks to make. And it's made gazillions of dollars now. money. It's a great movie, too. So, the thing is that studios are I'm hoping and I think there's always going to be the tentpole. They always have to have the the the spectacle. You know, I'm going to go see the Star Wars movie coming out. I'm going to go see Blade Runner. You know, I'm going to go see these big these big tentpole movies because they're fun. But at the end of the day, what YouTube has shown us and what streaming has shown us is that an hour and a half of your time can be taken up by something that cost five bucks or $500 million. At the end of the day, it's the same thing. And that's what scares the [ __ ] out of the studio system. Because a guy like you or I shooting this little podcast could maybe get five million, which would be amazing. But get five million um viewers to watch it. That's more That's more more than most television shows. Mhm. And it cost $20 to make. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's the That's the difference. Yeah, I you're you're completely right. Time is time. Absorbing consuming content is the same If I consume a $300 million piece of content or $3 piece of content, it's still an hour and a half of my time. The advertisers who want to get their my eyeballs on them, it's the same thing. That's why YouTube these YouTubers have so much power now because they realize they're like, "Oh, well, if I'm going to watch videos, I can produce them for so low so little the the the whole the whole world has changed right now in a way that um everyone's still trying to figure out because it's changing faster than anyone's figuring it out. So, the thing is to try to be a little bit ahead of the curve. Just a little bit ahead of the curve. But when Netflix showed up, that opened the door. Now Amazon threw their hat in the ring. Now Hulu's there. Now Apple's throwing their hat in the ring, you know. AT&T has their own channel. Everyone's got their own channels now. So, now we're I think there's 450 scripted shows going on right now. insane. A year? That's insanity. But look at all the all the opportunities there are now for filmmakers. This has got to be a huge moment for content creators. It is and it's not going to get any less. Like it's not like we're going to create less content in the future. It's only going to be more content, but we are going to get to a point I think that Look, when I was growing up, the cartoons I had were what they were. Transformers were Transformers. G.I. Joe's were G.I. Joe's and that was pretty much it. You waited for Saturday morning and that was the end of it. My daughters have instantaneous access to millions of hours of entertainment that they would be interested in. Millions of hours. So, what's going to happen to their kids? They're going to have billions of hours of content because of the next 30 years, how much content's going to be created? How many shows are going to be created? And and and some of it will go out of favor because it'll be like, "Oh, that's older technology and we won't watch that." But a lot of it will keep going. So, it's all going to be there. It's all going to be in the cloud. Everything's going to be accessible Right. with like a $10 subscription and and much of it can be available for nothing. So, that obviously is a huge predicament for the studio content creators. Like, how do you But imagine but like the content creators is one thing, but imagine the studios who like their entire business is run on these big movies that people aren't going This summer was the worst summer in I think a decade because the studios made no money. Mhm. Like they would they it was a horrific summer for for the studio system. It's really bad. Um and you know, there's only so many more I mean, I'm going to see every Star Wars movie they make because I'm a Star Wars fan. But uh but there's only so much of that, you know, people will get tired of it. People will get tired of unoriginal stuff. People will get tired of comic book movies. I think what Spielberg said is true this that the superhero movie will go the way of the Western. It will happen one day. One day cuz there's only so many times we can watch Spider-Man. There's only so many times we can watch The Avengers reboot. We can only watch so many times the it will eventually wane. I don't think it's happening right now. It probably won't happen for another 20, 30 years, but eventually it'll go away. I think this I I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that that that that train's going to go forever. I'm I'm super happy cuz when I was growing up, we had Superman in the '70s. We had Batman and uh I think Blade showed up in the '90s and then then the X-Men and then that's when it started happening, but we waited years between superhero movies. Now there's one every week, you know, $200 million one, you know. Yeah. I'm like I do love understanding the the history and it seems like you have a pretty good grasp on it, but uh looking at what happened to Westerns, seeing what's happening right now with the big superhero movies Dude, the the Westerns, that was all there was for a period of time. Like Yeah. TV, there was like five, 10 Westerns on. Movies, there was all these Westerns and all that content's still available though. Like the Western All that was there. So, the writing is on the wall. That's a genre that opened up and I think we're getting to a point like I think Logan is probably one of the best uh superhero genre movies ever and what did it do? It basically took a Western and remade it. Mhm. You know, which was so and they blatantly said it. Like we're we're dis ashamed. You know, and it was great. And and it was one of the best movies I've seen this year without question. And but it's getting to a point where you you have to evolve the platform. Like there's only so much more times you can see superhero come out and like save the day or beat up a like Cuz cuz you know where it's going. You know where it's going. a couple twists sometimes here and this way and that. And then like look, I'm looking forward to the Avengers. Like I can't wait to see the new Avengers with everybody in it. It's going to be good. But after that's done, what's next? Right, you can't just add another star, add another superhero. You will you will go down eventually. It will go down. It will go down eventually. It I you know, I don't like I said, I don't think it's going to happen for another 20 years. How many more Star Wars movies are we going to see? You know, I think I personally what I would do if I was the Star Wars universe cuz what are they doing right now? They're doing they're doing a Han Solo movie. They're going to do an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. They're they're thinking about doing a Boba Fett movie. I'm like all they're doing is just rehashing the old [ __ ] They're scared to go down a new path, which they did in their main the main uh the main trilogy, which is great, but they're not taking risks outside yet and that's fine. They're still early on in their universe building as they are, you know, after Lucas post Lucas. But I want to go to the Old Republic. Like I want to go when the Force started. Can you imagine that movie? Like no characters we know. It's all about when the Force began. Like when the Jedis were showing up for the first time. Like Can you imagine a such six movies? That That could easily cover six movies. Mhm. Just that journey of like and you can connect them to Skywalker if you want to somewhere. I don't care. But you can connect you know, go back 4,000 years and like and that's the kind of story I would like to see cuz it's brand new. It's fresh. It's something It still hits them nostalgia, but it's completely fresh. But it's risky. And I don't think it's that big of a risk personally. How many hours of sleep do you get a day cuz I feel like you consume a lot of content and you're creating just a ton of stuff and a ton of amazing meaningful work. Uh how much do you sleep a night? Um I personally currently I sleep probably about five or six hours a night. Yeah. Um Recently I I mean, I'll go to bed at 9:30, 10. 10's like, "Woo, girl, what's going on?" Uh and I I've been waking up anywhere between 3:00 and 5:00 every day. Three? Yeah, I woke up 3:00 yesterday uh yesterday. set an alarm or do you just wake up? just wake up. wake up. And if I wake up, I'm like, that's that's the world telling me I got to get to work. Yeah. Cuz I can't go back to sleep. Like cuz the mind will start kicking. I'm like, "Oh, I got this this post to do and that post to do and I got to work on this and I got to work on that." So, that's where I am right now currently in my journey. Um And what's the routine in the morning? Uh I wake up. I go uh you know, I do I do my my stuff. Uh and then I go into my office and I just start working. And I I wish I was a little bit more organized, but I just go like, "Whatever's on the plate, let's go." Yeah, right to work. And I just go do do do, check my stats, check uh what's going in, do do do do do, and let's and let's just keep going. Mhm. And that's my current mode right now because I'm in the mode of really building up Indie Film Hustle to a bigger place so where I can produce more for me and I can produce more for my audience. Uh to next year will be a little bit different when I start working on my my films, things will start probably slowing down a little bit and or I'll I'll front end a bunch of stuff that will last me the three months that I might be off shooting so I can constantly keep going. Like I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. Like I I have I do a couple masterminds. Um uh I do and if if your audience doesn't know what a mastermind is, you get together with like-minded people who are in your business or industry or sometimes not even and you talk about your problems, you talk about what you're doing, and you share advice, you share techniques, things like that to help you. And um you know, my the guys I that are in my mastermind, they they all run websites and they all do similar stuff that we do that that I do. Um have podcasts and things like that. And uh I tell them I'm like, "Yeah, man, I'm slacking this week. I'm I'm just, you know, I only get like three three or four articles out this week." And they're like, "Dude, are you [ __ ] insane?" Yeah. I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, did two podcasts this week. I really wanted to do three." Like, you're crazy, dude. Like, we do one every 2 weeks. I'm like, "But that's fine. That's you. Like, I'm I'm just the way I am. I just want to keep going." Because the thing is with me is I know every little piece of content I put out, every podcast episode that goes out, is another soldier to go out and get the word out. So, now that soldier goes off into the universe and goes finds people to bring them back Mhm. to listen to the podcast, to consume more content, to help more people. And that's that's what drives me cuz every new article, cuz I see it. I see what happens. Some soldiers don't do well. Some don't come back. They Some Some soldiers just don't come back. Uh but other ones do. And and uh the majority of them do. And one way, shape, or form, even if they bring one or two people back, that's one or two people that had not been exposed to my message, what I'm trying to do, uh and trying to help people out there. So, uh and filmmakers out there specifically. But that's what kind of drives me. So, I do that. Like, yesterday I worked woke up at 3:00, worked until 6:30, took care of my kids, and I worked until 6:00. So, I probably pulled in like a 12-13 hour day yesterday. I don't even think twice. And then I still And I still watch TV at night. I rest. I have, you know, spend time with my family, eat dinner, take care of them, and go to bed. And it's so for me, I always remember the days when I didn't have a family, when I was just alone. I used to do a lot more. Yeah. Yeah, like 20 articles a week. I did a lot more stuff. So, I look at myself, I'm like, "Damn, I'm slacking." You know? But once you start building the systems in and you start figuring things out, uh after doing this for 2 years now and and with the like I had told you with the podcast, like it doesn't take me a long time to produce a podcast anymore. Uh you told me how long it takes you to do one and God bless you. Yeah. That's why I only do one a week. Yeah, I do two a week, sometimes three, depending on what I'm doing. But the content's solid and it's not just be I'm not throwing out garbage. I'm not. I'm not BuzzFeed. Not that BuzzFeed's bad, but they throw everything out because that's their business. That's what they do. They just they're bringing everything out. So, I try to create as much great content as possible. But that is my my morning routine. I And I do want to after I think in October sometime, I'm going to finally start going back to the gym. And probably start trying to get more back into meditation, which is something I do miss doing. But I'm in such a hyper-focused mode, it's just so difficult. I want to see I want to see if that's possible. I haven't quite figured it out yet when I was editing minimalism and working hardcore on that. And even uh now my schedule is so freed up that I can go to the gym. But during that time when I was just crazy work mode, it's like I only have a certain amount of bandwidth. And my mind can only be focused on a certain amount of tasks at once. Uh I would love to get to the point where I could go to the gym, be healthy, and meditate every day, do all these things, eat healthy, and then still uh execute and create amazing work. And you know, maybe maybe that's a possibility. But right now, it's tough. Well, I'll tell you one thing that I happened to me um during Meg, I was about 25 lb heavier than I am now. And uh I I just And I was still doing a lot of stuff. Like, fascinating how much I was doing back then. But I I decided to I had to change my diet. I had to change the way I looked at food in my life. So, I decided to change it. And when I did, when I lost the weight, um my whole world changed. Because now was my mind became super-focused. And now I can produce more. I'm like, "Oh, this is what I need to." So, it's not an option for me not to eat healthy. Like, I have to. I have no choice. Cuz if I don't eat healthy, I can't produce. If I can't produce, I can't put food on the table for my family. And I can't at the level that I want to be at. Not at the level that other people want me to be at, but the level that I want to be at, which is at a very high level. I have to I have to feed this engine and make this engine work as as good as humanly possible, which is uh by taking good care of it, by eating it. And now the next levels are going to be getting back into the gym and also starting to do even 10-minute meditations, just something to start trying to focus even more. And I know I'll get much more benefit out of that as well. What's the best thing you've done uh or I guess the most impactful thing you've done to grow your audience? Podcast. The podcast has Yeah, podcast. Uh podcast you get people to come to the podcast to start listening? Um I Just make good [ __ ] Just make good [ __ ] I know it's hard like And someone asked Quentin Tarantino, like, "How do you break into the business?" Like, "Make Reservoir Dogs. That's a badass movie." Everyone just pissed off. That's [ __ ] genius. He's right. Make a good ass movie, you're going to get in the business. Yeah. Um Yeah, I I created it No, cuz there's a lot of good stuff out there that doesn't get any eyes. Mhm. I've always been able to get people to look at stuff I'm doing. It's just a It's a It's It's something in ingrained in me. Like, I I I just got it inside of me that I know how to make noise. And I know how to get people coming. And then I also know how to position things to get people to come. So, a perfect example is um I have a good friend of mine named Scott Scott McMahon who runs filmtrooper.com. He has a podcast as well. He wrote a book called um Surviving the Hollywood Implosion. Uh and what he's talking about like when Hollywood will implode and like Spielberg says the whole business is going to implode on itself. And I believe there is a a sense of truth to that. But he wrote a whole book about it. So, I had him on the show. And he has a podcast. It's, you know, he doesn't get as many downloads as I do. And he's been doing it much longer than I have. And he's the He's the nicest I love He's like one of my I love him. He's a He's amazing. But he always was fascinated with like, "How do you do everything you do?" So, I'm like, "All right. Let Let us Let's get you on the show." So, I got him on the show. And I put him on the And this was early on. This was I don't know, episodes in the '70s or something like that, '60s, '70s. And um I positioned it in a way that I'm like, "Hey, learn how to survive the Hollywood Implosion with Scott McMahon." And that was the name of the podcast. And it went bonkers. Because everybody was like, "What's What's What's Hollywood What's going on?" Mhm. And when I showed it to him, I go, "Here are the numbers." And he's like, "Motherfucker. That's my name THAT'S MY TITLE. WHY HAVE I NEVER USED IT?" I'M LIKE, "Because your mind doesn't think that way. Yeah. You have to think in a way of of getting people enticed to to read yourself, to listen to your stuff, and then know where to go and put it. The trouble I have is not going too far down the BuzzFeed route. The where it's too catchy, too um click-baity. Exactly. There's a There's a balance. There's a balance. And how how do you meet that balance? Cuz I could see Oh, yeah, you can I think what what hurts people I mean, you you have to create, say, a title or the name of a course that's really going to pull people in, but that also doesn't deceive them as to what they're getting. Correct. So, that's the That's the balance that I try to use where I try to have that click-baity approach sometimes, but not as spammy. Mhm. But there's something good behind it. Sure. So, that's the difference. It's marketing. You know, to get someone to click on something, but you got to have the goods when you get there. Cuz if you don't, they go to your site. This is And this is just This is something that a lot of people don't get. They're like, "I just want to get traffic." Like, "No, dude. You don't want to get traffic. You need to get qualified people who really are interested in what you're saying." So, if you can get them to click, you can bring them into your ecosystem and then they can start reading all their stuff. But if you make them Look, dude. Like, that was happening with YouTube. YouTube originally, you put a thumbnail of a hot chick, and people were clicking. And then before you would rank based on clicks. And And YouTube got, you know, keen to that a little bit in because people were just gaming the system. People were getting, you know, because they put a hot chick on something, someone's going to click. All these dudes are going to click on it. Uh but it doesn't have anything of really value. We We We are fairly fairly easily. Yeah. But But yeah, so that's But if you're able to get them to click, not deceivingly either. I never deceive anybody with with my my marketing tactics, if you will. Uh I try never to because it just hurts you at the end. At the end of the day, if you promise something and don't deliver on it, they're not going to trust you. And they're not going to want to come back and consume anything that you're trying to create. And that might be a a disservice to them and a disservice to yourself. So, why do that? So, there is that balance of getting them to click, getting them excited, but also having the goods at the end. And that's where a lot of these these BuzzFeed kind of style sites lose themselves. Um you know, the No Film Schools of the world and these kind of places that are all like, "Gear and this and that and look at this and look at this hot thing." And a lot of times there's not a lot of substance behind it. And it's just about getting traffic, so Google Ads will run more. It's all about the growth. It's all about the growth. yeah. It's all about getting money. And I don't do that, you know. My stuff is much more organic. I could have grown much faster if doing other things, but I didn't. I decided to go down this path, which is a longer path. But by doing it, now I have this, you know, I have almost over 500 pieces of content on the site uh in 2 years. So, that's an insane amount of of work, you know? And it's And I haven't always been pumping it out at five a week or seven a week or 10 a week, whatever I do now. Um so, you know, I was used to do one a week or two a week or something like that. So, having that much content, now I have this very, very solid foundation. But that takes time. And that's the one other thing I can say to anyone listening, and the biggest piece of advice is you have to understand that anything you do will take time. There is no overnight successes. You can't have a 1-year plan. You have to have a 10-year plan. And that's just the way it is. And if you don't like it, I'm sorry. It's just the way the world works. I don't want I wish I could have just I I wish right now, after I leave here, I can go down to the studio and start my $200 epic. That's not happening. That's not the way the world works right now for me. But you can get to that point, but it will take time to build that world for yourself. And the more you build the world, the more you have to fall back on. If that makes any sense. So if you're cheating and you're you know, you're cutting the lines and all this kind of stuff, trying to get and I tried doing it for years trying to trying to hack the system, uh at a certain point when you look back, you got nothing to fall back on because all you've been doing is dodging and weaving. But when you have this base, this foundation that you've built up and you say that's why I have I really have a new sense of fearlessness because of Indie Film Hustle. Because I'm like, oh if that doesn't work, I'll just go back I have Indie Film Hustle. That's my base now. That's my that's my safety net. As weird as that sounds, my podcast, my my blog, my YouTube channel, those are my those are my safety nets. So as a filmmaker, I'm fearless now. I'll just go out and do something. I don't give a [ __ ] if it doesn't If it doesn't come out great, look man, I didn't make it This is why it didn't work. Here's a podcast on it. Here's a course on how I didn't make it. Why didn't it work? That's great. That's a great mentality. That's just the way I I look at things now and it's opened the door for me in such a huge way. I can't even explain to you doing Indie Film Hustle. I get I'm connected with people who would have never in a million years um I would have never been able to get to in a million years. I think it sounds like one of the most important things you've done is is to start with integrity and start with Amazing, right? Right. Cuz like you If you lose your integrity, it is really hard to to get it back. Come back again. And you know what? It's tough. Look, you know, it's not been perfect the entire journey on on Indie Film Hustle. You know, there's sometimes you're like, oh I just did this. Oh I just did that. And you get addicted to numbers and you want to do this, this, and this. I get it. But I finally settled in a place where I'm like, this is how I'm going to do this. Mhm. And this is how it's going to happen. Right. Because just like there's the rat race of the 9-to-5 world, there is a rat race to the clicks and the views and the downloads. killing our new system. It is. Yeah. It's all about the clicks. It's all about getting people excited and getting them to click and that's all it's about. Uh but the substance is gone. So when you actually connect with someone and you don't have to have a huge audience, you know, you could have a thousand people who really love what you're doing and you can make a very good living doing that. Mhm. Um Yeah, I think the the thousand fan rule. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just don't be greedy. Just be happy and content with what you have. You know what? This is another thing that people get so caught up with is like, I really don't care about being a millionaire. I don't care about, you know, making millions of billions of dollars. It doesn't interest me. What interests me is having enough money where I'm comfortable, I've provided for my family, and I have, you know, a bunch of savings that will protect us if something goes wrong. And and a couple of jet skis. Just cuz I've never been on one before, You haven't experienced that yet. I mean, for me it's like, you know, a life-size Hulk. But that's just me. Yeah. I just you know That's the thing. Yeah. That's the thing. But yeah, you know, but I don't I I I gave up on that. And not that I don't I wouldn't like that and it's great, but it's not important to me. It's more important to just be financially stable, have enough for my family, and if I'm able to do all of that and do my art and create and be an artist, that's the dream. That's the dream. The dream is not to live in the Hollywood Hills with, you know, four Porsches, ser you know, servants, and you know, live in a mansion that has 15 rooms that you'll never get to. What's the point of all that? Who am I talking to? You wrote made a movie about minimalism for god's sakes. But um But uh but that's not the goal for me. And I think that that mind change that mind shift that I did years ago kind of just opened that door for me. So now opportunities are coming in. Now um things are are are coming into my life that I would never had when I was just holding on to that like I need I never look at anything I do now with like I need the money. I need I have like, no the money comes just let me enjoy the opportunity if the opportunity shows up. You know, I'm not dumb either. I mean, I'm going to negotiate a deal, I'm going to negotiate a deal, you know, financially so I you know, I can get paid for my time as a director, but it's not the driving force where a lot of creatives their driving force is money. So when you get out of that space, and it's not easy, espec Look, it's it's not easy when you have no you know, you can't pay rent, you can't do this, but you you know, you it's possible. That should be the target. Because when you're starting out, like you said, sometimes you just got to take the job, sometimes you just need to make the money and do a project for the money's sake. I did I did that I did that. But I'm in a different stage of my career and I'm in a different stage of my life. When I first got here 10 years ago, I worked nonstop cuz I was doing everything that showed up at my door. Everything. The good, the bad, the ugly. It was all in because I was just hustling making money. Got to go, got to go, got to go, got to go. Now I'm at a point in my career where I don't have to do that anymore. And that takes time to be in that place. Um but I've done it. I've done it a lot, you know, and you have to do it when you're starting out. You have to work for free when you start out to get in the door and start doing this and start doing that. All of that, but I'm just at a different place in my career at this point cuz if you're in 30 years or I'm not 30 years, but if you're in 20 years and you're still doing that kind of hustle, you've got to figure some stuff out, man. You've got to start like, okay, what am I doing wrong here? Cuz I shouldn't have to be working this hard. You know, what what is the mindset? And the other thing with a lot of people is that they're afraid of what will happen if they don't do it. Like, so what are you afraid of? And this is when uh stoic philosophy comes into play. What are you afraid of happening to you? Like, okay, so if I don't take this job, I'm not going to have this money. Well, what what what do you live? Well, I live in this amazing place. I'm like, well, do you need to live in this amazing place? Again, I'm preaching to the guy who made minimalism. Um but do you need that place? This is perfect for my audience. Like, what do you what do you really need? And what's the goal? So that mentality is why I took into Meg into making the movie. I'm like, what do I need? I need a camera, I need sound, I need the I I took it straight down to the minimal things that you need to make a movie. And that's what we did. There was no, you know, my my actress was my slate girl and the craft service table. You know, I was camera, I was DP, I was the gaff. I had the guy holding the boom cuz he wasn't a sound guy cuz I literally just showed him how to use the recorder before he got there. I've done that. Yeah, and it and it worked, you know? And it cuz I did enough research to figure it out. I taught myself. But you have to figure out what is the minimal things. Like I'm like, oh I'm hungry. Like, well, what's what's the worst food that you can buy when you're broke? Like, do it to yourself. Mhm. And that will teach you not to be afraid of something. So if you're afraid, I'm like, man, if I only eat rice and beans uh for a month, what's going to happen to you? Give it a give it a try for 2 weeks. You'll live. Yeah. Put some salt pepper on there, you got yourself a stew. You know, you're good. Yeah. Will you survive? I'm not saying you're thriving in that world, but will you live? Yeah, you will. Don't be afraid of those things. Don't be afraid of of of uh of things that you've built up in your own head. Do you need five rooms in your house? No, maybe you could just get an apartment. And now your overhead's lower, so now you have more freedom to do other things that you this other all this baggage you've been putting on top of you is is is doing. You know, I've gone through it myself and to the point where now I'm like trying to downsize and it like we were talking about earlier before the show. It's like it's hard to downsize when you have kids. Yeah, it's always a little bit more difficult in life. bit more difficult, you know, I I got twin girls, so it's a little bit a little bit more challenging. But my wife and I have been trying to slowly pair things down, pair things down. What do we really need? Um and it's not easy. It's not easy. It you know, we don't make it all the time. We're not perfect either. But it's at least that mentality and so I'm not afraid of like what will happen, which was the fear of making a feature. Mhm. Like, what happens if it goes out there and no one likes it? I didn't care. You know, and I look at Ridley Scott. I'm sure you know who Ridley is, right? Ridley um for the for people in the audience who don't know Ridley Scott is, he directed Aliens, he directed Blade Runner, um and a million other movies that are amazing. Ridley, and I think a lot of these guys who are at that level, they just don't care. They He was like, I never read reviews. I just keep going. And he's been doing it all his career because he's made some movies that I I'm like, dude, Ridley, what the hell happened? You know, you know, in my opinion and in a lot of people's opinions, but he doesn't care. He's like, I'm just going to keep going. I wanted to do that movie. You don't like it? It's all right. I got the next one coming. Let's go. Mhm. And that's an artist. That's someone who really understands their art, that understands themselves, and they're true to themselves. And that's what you people listening should do is like just don't care about the world so much. You know, if you're making a movie for money, which we all have to make money, try to make something that makes sense. If it doesn't work, figure out what didn't work and go do it do something different. But if you're going to take risks, do it on a low budget. You know, if if someone gave me a half a million dollars to make Meg, I would not been so chilled. Yeah. I would have said no. I'm not going to go make a movie for half a million dollars with Meg. That doesn't make any financial sense. You know, why am I going to go you know, gold plate my Prius and try to sell it for $400,000? Probably not going to be sold. Mhm. That's the business that we're in. It's such a weird business, too. You create a product, you don't even know what you're going to sell the product for. We're the only business in the world that creates products, we have no suggestion manufacturer retail price. Yeah. We don't. You have no idea what you're going to get back from it. It's the craziest business. You know, you get these pair of glasses, I make these glasses for 5 cents, I sell it for 10, there's our profit. With films, you can kind of oh if I put this star in it or this genre and I I where to sell, but it's like crap shoot a lot of most of the times it's a crapshoot. What do you say we get to quick questions and round up this episode? brother. All right. So, what's the simplest advice that's the most important to follow? Uh patience. Patience, patience, patience, patience. The biggest thing I've ever had to deal with is understanding patience. You're always in a hurry to get to where you're going or what you're trying to achieve. But again, if you enjoy that ride, it's life is so much easier, man. It just becomes so so much easier. Just talking about Ridley Scott and criticism. If you do look at your critics and what people say about the work you do, how do you deal with it? Well, uh when I the first exa- the first exposed to that criticism was when I did Broken, my first short film, which was everywhere online. And we had nothing but good reviews for the first like 60 reviews. And then afterwards, I got Roger Ebert to give me a review. Um I met him at a Toronto Film Festival. That's a whole other story, but he he watched our little short film and gave us It was so pleasant. He was such a wonderful man. And he um he gave us a good review. Afterwards, the haters came out like full-blown. Like, "This isn't all that. This is crap." And then at the time, I was a young kid. Um I was 30. And I would literally go after every one of them. Like, I would go back with You know what? [ __ ] you. And I would like literally try to end I did that. It was exhausting. Exhausting. So, at a certain point, look, nobody wants to hear that someone doesn't like your work. We're artists. We want everyone to love our work. But at the end of the day, especially when you're at the levels of Ridley Scott or any of that, but even at at our level of indie films, you just got to keep going, man. You can't You know, I've had bad reviews on Meg, you know, but like, "All right, man. Keep going, you know, listen to it. If it There's difference between constructive criticism and just straight-up haters. And there's a lot of haters out there. I did a whole episode on haters. Like, what to do when people hate on you. Sometimes they can be funny cuz sometimes they make no [ __ ] sense at all. No, and and then and then it's so easy to get them riled up. And I I try I don't do that anymore, but I'd be like, you know, "Oh, how are you doing in your mom's basement?" You know, things like that. Um but I decide I don't do that anymore. It's so much fun. Yeah. Um but it it doesn't ca- it doesn't create anything positive in your life. distracting, too. Yeah, it just doesn't create anything positive in your life. And I just like, "You know what? If that's your opinion, it's all it is. It's your opinion. You cannot make everyone happy." So, just just kind of block it out. You're going If it's the first time you're going through it, it's going to be painful. Um don't read them. Just try to just keep moving forward as much as you can. And on a side note real quick, if you if you only focus your energy on one project and then live with that project for 3 years, you're going to drive yourself mad. Keep working. Keep making new stuff. Don't just sit around waiting. Oh god, I got to keep going with this project. Like, no, don't. Just give it a lot of time and move on. Where do you go when you're feeling doubt? The movie theater. I go to the movie theater. It's my church. You know, I'll I'll go to I'll go watch a movie by myself. Uh I don't do it very often, but that's where I generally go. Like, if I'm in if I'm in real despair or in a place where I'm just not It's home for me. It's where I've always You go by yourself? Yeah, you know, I go by myself. Yeah. That's I've done it a few times. Yeah. Well, Yeah, cuz I I don't do it often where I go to the movies, period, but just going by yourself to movies is like you said, yeah, it is a nice meditative experience. You don't have to worry about what the if your partner likes it or your kids like it. I'm there and I'm just me and and the artist who put that on the screen for me. And that's it. And I usually bring my popcorn cuz it's ridiculous at the theaters. Oh, it's crazy. But it tastes so good. Um what one skill should everyone learn? Um persistence. Uh you have to persist. Resi- Don't resist, persist. And you got to keep going no matter what happens. And I'll I'll I'll quote the the the great Rocky Balboa, uh who says, "It's not about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward." And it's absolutely true. It's like one of the best speeches I've ever seen on film. It's so good. That that one like it's like a 90-second speech to his son or 2-minute speech to his son. You're just like, It's amazing, you know. watched it on an airplane and cried. No, it's like amazing That movie's great. Rocky Balboa That was a good movie. It had no business being a good movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It had no business being a good movie. It was like, "Oh my god, Sly, dude, what the hell? This is amazing." So much fun. just but just creating that just being persistent. And and if you don't have that skill, you won't make it in this business or any business, honestly, or in life. If you if you just fold the second something happens to you or you fold when adversity hits you, you're done. You just then you won't move. And then you're just going to sit there lump in a log angry uh writing hate mail. That's great. All right, to wrap things up, two questions. Yeah. Uh first, name one thing people should rewatch or listen to before they go to bed tonight. Uh The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Uh it it's one of those amazing books that uh it's about following your dreams. And uh it's one of those books that changed my life. And also um also just uh changed the world in a lot of ways. A good book can do that in a way that good cinema or good art or anything can do. And how should people connect with you online? Um I'm pretty much everywhere as you can imagine, but uh indiefilmhustle.com. Um uh Twitter is at Indie Film Hustle. Facebook is at Indie Film Hustle. Instagram is at iFilmHustle. There's I mean, Instagram had an issue. Um a disagreement. So, it's iFilmHustle. Uh and then my personal directing side is I is at alexferrari.com. Awesome, man. Thanks for taking the time today. Hey, brother. Thank you, man. I had a great time. All right. Thanks for listening to the Ground Up Show. If you like this podcast, there's something you can do right now to help. Head on over to iTunes and leave a quick review. I print out every single one and I put them up on my mood board above my bed. Okay, that's not true, but I still notice and appreciate every one. For more on the Ground Up Show, including behind-the-scenes videos, check out groundupshow.com. Thanks for listening.